In the electronics industry, as products such as cell phones and camcorders become smaller and smaller, increased miniaturization of integrated circuit (IC) packages has become more and more critical. At the same time, higher performance and lower cost have become essential for new products.
In these assemblies, an image sensor was located within a housing, which supported a window. Radiation passed through the window and struck the image sensor, which responded to the radiation.
Also in these assemblies, an image sensor was mounted to a substrate. After the image sensor was mounted, a housing was mounted around the image sensor and to the substrate. This housing provided a hermetic like barrier around the image sensor, while at the same time, supported a window above the image sensor.
As the technology moves to smaller and lighter weight electronic devices, it has become increasingly important that the size of the image sensor assembly used within these electronic devices is reduced. Unfortunately, conventional image sensor assemblies require a housing to support the window and to hermetically seal the image sensor and these housings are relatively bulky and extend upwards from the substrate a significant distance.
In addition, mounting these housings at the substrate level is inherently labor intensive and makes repair or replacement of the image sensors difficult. In particular, removal of the housing exposes the image sensor to the ambient environment. Since the image sensor is sensitive to dust as well as other environmental factors, it is necessary to make repairs or replacement of the image sensors in a controlled environment, such as a clean room. Otherwise, there was a risk of damaging or destroying the image sensor.
Since neither of these alternatives is desirable and both are expensive, there has been a long felt need for an image sensor assembly, which is simple to manufacture and service so that costs associated with the image sensor assembly are minimized.
A solution has been the development of a completely encapsulated image sensor packages. However, encapsulated image sensor packages typically require a custom-made mold chase to pre-form a package cavity for housing the image sensor. The drawback of such custom-made mold chases is their high cost of manufacture.
Further, encapsulated image sensor packages require the use of custom-made substrates, which also have a high manufacturing cost.
Even further, the fabrication methods used to fabricate the image sensor package involve a relatively large number of processes.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought, but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.